Jack and Jill were enormously pleased to be released from the confines of our vehicle after such an unexpectedly long and tediously uncomfortable drive up the Mountain Road to Gatineau Park. We'd forgotten what a slog it used to be, younger back then and more tolerant of discomfort when we tended to use it regularly. We began to remember certain landmarks still discernible after so many decades, on our drive, although there was much that was different. Many homes had been built along the route before arriving at the Mountain Road, palatial looking places whose owners clearly relished being tucked away from the packed urban corridor.

New places too, albeit not as grand in areas along the Mountain Road, too. The old golf course flanked by magnificent old maples whose girth used to astonish us are all still there and close to the golf course the road had been newly paved for a very short length. After our disappointment at not being able to find the even-back-then faded areas of ingress to the old, abandoned trails we had so much enjoyed when our children were young, finding ourselves on an alternative opportunity rather than having made that long drive to no avail, seemed a reprieve from profound disappointment.

As we made our way along the fireroad track, the forest became increasingly interesting with rocky outcrops and picturesque scenes framing the lake as we passed; the lake serene and slightly ruffled under a puffy-white-clouded blue sky and a stiff breeze. Our two puppies found ample opportunity to familiarize themselves with a new environment, arousing their interest to scatter hither and yon, snouts to the ground. We came across colonies of huge ostrich ferns and boggy areas rich with thick layers of mosses beside the trail.

Eventually we arrived at the furthest end of the lake, where we could see water lilies in bloom and what certainly looked like a beaver dam. We had seen looking across at the opposite shore, halfway along the lake, what appeared to be a muskrat house. As we approached a sudden rise in the trail before us we saw jogging toward us a couple of people. They looked at first like a man and a young girl, perhaps a pre-teen, but in fact they were a young mature couple, who told us they had started out at Lac Philippe and jogged the ten kilometres from there to where we were. While we stood and spoke, a pair of hummingbirds hovered into view, but soon fled our presence.

After talking together awhile, we resumed our opposite directions. We steadily climbed the hill that the trail rose upon, lengthily in a prolonged ascent until we finally came upon a spiny but comfortably wide ridge, with the land falling steeply away on both sides, the lake long gone, but below a vast wetland on the left, on the right a tightly-packed forest. We had also left the conifers largely behind and what dominated here were deciduous trees, with the occasional pine in evidence.

A large flock of blackbirds, numbering at least one hundred, perhaps gathering to begin their long fall migration south, filtered through the trees, flying just slightly above the trail until they had all passed and gone on to prepare to embark upon their destined journey.

This was a delightful excursion for us, plenty to see and to appreciate, and a venue we will at some time or another return to. Before that, however, we may decide to return to other areas of the vast nature preserve so close to where we live, to search out other trails long neglected by us and certain to be still navigable.